


Good Grief

by KissedByNightshade



Category: Bleach
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 09:37:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7569190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KissedByNightshade/pseuds/KissedByNightshade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What's gonna be left of the world if you're not in it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good Grief

**Author's Note:**

> Ventfic. Be careful reading if you're not in a good place.

 

He doesn’t think he liked fires, before. They always seemed too dangerous, too volatile. Taking up too much space and ruining anything they touched. He recalls being afraid of them, for one reason or another. 

Now he can’t stop thinking about how similar he is to one. Set loose, he’s equally deadly and equally dead, not a thought left between his ears. No identity, only destruction. With a fire as big as this one, it would only take one misfired spark to set the entire District aflame. 

He wonders how quickly he could move, whether he’d be able to flash-step to the top of the pyre before Rangiku or Shuuhei or someone stopped him. He wonders if it would be enough to actually kill him, or if he’d be left with a melted, deformed body, blackened to a crisp and left to the mocking mercies of Twelfth Division once more.

His options soundly considered, he turns away from the fire and hunches on his hind legs, birdlike.

The funeral ended hours ago. Izuru had worn his half-shorn shihakusho, earning him discomfited looks from the few nobles in attendance, all in fancy attire for the occasion. He didn’t care. He hadn’t entirely been sure why so many nobles were present for the ceremony, anyhow. It wasn’t like the man of the hour had ever done anything for _them_.

Images cycle through his mind. Rangiku grabbing him by the elbow and steering him to stand between her and Shuuhei. The two of them holding him there, like the pins in a bird’s wings as they are spread for examination. They made him stand in the crowd and listen to Kuchiki Byakuya’s mild, polite, _boring_  speech about _loyalty_  and _strength_  and some other bullshit. Moral character or something like that. It was so uninspired that listening was like trying to eat sawdust. Izuru thought that Renji might actually be offended that no one else got to contribute, had he been informed of the proceedings. 

He’s still not sure what they were so afraid of, not to let him speak. Was it the purpling bruises still speckled across his skin, across his face and hand and the uneven triangle of skin just under his throat where there’s still flesh? Or is it what they thought he might say?

Maybe that was for the best. He’s afraid of what he might have said as well.

A scrap of charred fabric flutters near his foot, so he picks it up, picks himself up. Walks back to the rest of the group and tosses the shred of what looks like a sleeping yukata back onto the fire. Back with the rest of Renji’s possessions, the ones Shuuhei and Rangiku had fetched from Sixth Division the moment they had the chance to slip away. Truthfully, they’d probably started looking for an opportunity to do so the second they realized that the funeral wasn’t going to be enough. 

“Renji would never want to be buried in the Seireitei,” Shuuhei had said after, and he couldn’t bring himself to care.

The crackling of the flames draws him back, and he wonders if the poems he wrote are in there. The poem he’d pinned to Renji’s door anonymously, and the poem he’d submitted to the magazine, hoping Renji would and wouldn’t read it. All the other poems he’d left for him. And the calligraphy set he’d given Renji upon his promotion, two years ago. Or the pressed flowers he’d left in the pages of Renji’s books, just to see if he’d ever find them. The books themselves. 

He wonders if Shuuhei brought the sheets from Renji’s quarters — sheets they’d shared many times, back when they were both alive. If Shuuhei had retrieved the clothes from under his bed and separated out the ones that belonged to a shinigami named Izuru. If he’d noticed, and if he’d cared. If he’d volunteered to go with Rangiku because he knew that wasn’t something anyone else was ready to do.

He can’t feel Shuuhei’s hand digging into the crook of his elbow, or Rangiku’s hair brushing his cheek as she leans her head onto his shoulder, or Momo’s tears a moment later when they run down his chest and disappear into the folds of fabric. He doesn’t see Rukia rubbing her eyes on the hem of Rangiku’s shihakusho sleeves, and he doesn’t hear the sloshing of the bottle Ikkaku is knocking back. All he can feel is the place where fire tore out his heart and left behind nothing but ashes. 

It doesn’t matter where Renji is buried, honestly, or if he’s even buried at all. It doesn’t matter if his ashes are scattered to the breeze, or if his corpse is left out for the dogs, or if the body is sunk in the river or put out to sea. It doesn’t matter, because he’s gone, and nothing can change that. 

And Izuru thinks that even with all the technology of the Seireitei at hand, there’s nothing anyone can do to revive him now, because his heart is burning along with all of the other things that once belonged to Abarai Renji.


End file.
